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POLITICO 44

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said Thursday that President Barack Obama will pay a political price for his lack of visibility in the Gulf region during the catastrophic BP oil spill.

“The president has not been as visible as he should have been on this, and he’s going to pay a political price for it, unfortunately,” Landrieu told POLITICO. “But he’s going down tomorrow, he’s made some good announcements today, and if he personally steps up his activity, I think that would be very helpful.”

Landrieu’s comments came as Obama spoke to reporters in the East Room of the White House, defending his administration’s response to the ecological disaster. The president plans to head to the Gulf to inspect the oil spill on Friday.

“Those who think that we were either slow in our responses or lacked urgency don’t know the facts,” Obama said Thursday. “This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.”

But Landrieu, who is seeing her home state’s economy decimated by the spill, said she’s “absolutely not” satisfied with the administration’s response so far. She added, though, that Thad Allen, the former Coast Guard commandant who is overseeing the response to the spill, has support from Republicans and Democrats “across the board.”

Obama has come in for bipartisan criticism from Louisiana. Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, has faulted the White House effort, while Louisiana native James Carville, a Democratic strategist who helped run President Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, has also been critical of Obama’s response, recently calling it “lackadaisical.”

Readers' Comments (490)

Be realistic. Nothing can be done for the Gulf of Texaco. . It is not a like a bathtub that can be cleaned up with Softscrub.. It is ruined and dead. Anyhone who didn't imagine this happening when these rigs were being approved is absolutely ignorant.

These people are merely showing their arrogance to think that humans can fix this. The leadership of the Gulf states wanted these dirty jobs and welcomed oil development....now they can quit crying about it and pointing fingers at Obama. It is their own fault and they get no sympathy - I only feel bad for the wildlife.

It is not as if there are any wars, or record unemployment, or record numbers of families being evicted from their homes, or a third war about to start in Korea, or rogue nations building nuclear weapons, or anything important like that going on.

These are just calm, quiet, normal times where the government is spending money they do not have and ignoring requests from governors to protect the borders from an invasion.

Obama should take more vacations, he earned it having brought this happy era of hope and change to all Americans.

Landrieu is disgusting. She represents all that is wrong with politics. We need people that are authentic and want to make a positive difference in the lives of people. Unfortunately she is hung up on race politics and playing the the lowest levels of people. The people in her state don't need posturing. They need people who have ideas that can get to the center of power and influence the decision process with solutions that work. This engenders trust.

So Obama has now scheduled a Q&A session with the media in the 6th week of this BP Gulf Disaster. If this one goes off like the others, it will be all talk and no action. Ten or twelve carefully screened questions - Heck!... the Administration might even prepare the questions beforehand and then pass them out to their favoured distributors in the Press Corps. I wonder if the "Wonderful Wizard" will be responding from behind the big curtain or will the teleprompter be rolling?

"The federal government is fully engaged, and I'm fully engaged," Obama said...while subconsciously thinking... "Fully engaged with the destruction of our capitolist system and the antequated Constitution"

Every instance of major crisis that Baruch Odinga has faced in his Preznitcy has been a failure and a "phone-it-in" gambit. He did the same thing during the Oct 07' meltdown. Mccain went in and got tarred and feathered for his effort and Obama phoned it in and ran away and somehow was praised as "cool and collected". This is all no big surprise: he;s never been a chief executive, never even run so much as a lemonade stand. It shows. Leaders lead, others follow. Odinga is more of a follower. What a disgrace.

Isn't "CHAOS" the goal of the Alinsky-ites, Cloward and Piven and Obama and his czars, in order to create more crises that shouldn't be wasted?

With the flood of oil in the Gulf that obama wouldn't do anything about, the flood of illegal aliens streaming across our borders which obama won't do anything about, the economy crashing, high unemployment, the euro crashing, socialist Europe failing, N. Korea vs. S. Korea, Iran threatening nukes against us and Israel, obama must be smiling deeply.

Next thing we know obama will be seizing the internet, taking over the TV stations and airwaves because of all of this chaos and his desire to take care of us. Beware, be very aware.

This was a Cloward-Piven flourish: let the oil spill get so egregious that, abracadabra, all offshore drilling is suspended! Same thing with spending the nation's wealth: sooner or later, the country will crack and only government handouts will suffice.

Really? What does anyone expect the Feds to do? Point fingers? Shuffle papers? God knows none of these bureaucraps produce anything but red tape and paper laws. Short of calling out the military (the one arm of the government which is action-oriented), there is nothing the suit-and-tie gang can do except make media sound bites.

"It is their own fault and they get no sympathy - I only feel bad for the wildlife."

And you typed that ignorant comment on a computer made of petrochemical products powered by the use of fossil fuels. Let me guess: you live in and air conditioned house, drive a gasoline powered car, have a cell phone and are probably drinking out of a plastic cup.

The "dirty jobs" you refer to supports thousands of families, provides tax revenue and keeps the power on for hypocrites like so you can complain about it.

Landrieu, Vitter, Scalise, Jindal are in the pocket of big oil. Drill baby drill is their motto. They voted to have the tax payers pay for the oil spill and to protect BP from having to pay for the damage. They want Obama to stop pressuring the oil companies. They set it up so the oil companies regulated themselves. They only care about fishing votes not the fisherman, they don't care about the environment or tourism only the votes. Why because oil pays for the elections which is to divert people's attention else where so people will vote against their own interest.